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| Laurent de La Hyre Panthea protected by Cyrus from Araspas (from the Cyropaedia of Xenophon) ca. 1631-34 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Anonymous British Artist The Elopement (from Clarissa by Samuel Richardson) ca. 1785 oil on canvas Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Francesco Guardi Sophronia imploring the Saracen King Aladine to release the Christian Prisoners (from Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso) before 1793 oil on canvas Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston-upon-Hull |
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| Charles Robert Leslie Uncle Toby with the Widow Wadman (from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne) 1829-30 oil on canvas Tate Britain, London |
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| Charles West Cope Il Penseroso (from Il Penseroso by John Milton) 1848 oil on panel Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| James Sant The Bride of Abydos (from The Bride of Abydos by George Gordon, Lord Byron) ca, 1850 oil on canvas Government Art Collection, London |
from The Bride of Abydos
Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess
The might, the majesty of Loveliness?
Such was Zuleika, such around her shone
The nameless charms unmarked by her alone:
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole –
And, oh! that eye was in itself a soul!
– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1814)
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| William Bell Scott Una and the Lion (from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser) ca. 1860 oil on canvas Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
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| Emma Sandys Elaine (from The Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson) ca. 1862-65 oil on panel National Trust, Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton |
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| Dante Gabriel Rossetti Dante's Dream (from La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri) ca. 1869-72 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Edward Burne-Jones Laus Veneris (from Laus Veneris by Algernon Charles Swinburne) 1873-75 oil on canvas Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne |
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| William Maw Egley Florence Dombey in Captain Cuttle's Parlour (from Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens) 1888 oil on canvas Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| John Collier Hetty Sorrel (from Adam Bede by George Eliot) ca. 1890 oil on canvas Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Lancashire |
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| William Robert Symonds The Princess and the Frog (from The Frog Prince by the Brothers Grimm) 1894 oil on canvas Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire |
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| John Duncan Fand and Manannan (from the Irish ballad, The Sickbed of Cúchulainn) ca. 1913 oil on canvas McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Greenock, Inverclyde, Scotland |
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| Maurice Greiffenhagen Cophetua (from the English ballad, The King and the Beggar-Maid) ca. 1920-25 oil on canvas Glasgow Museums |